Bending the rules
Spoon-fed: Geller performs a familiar party trick
‘The sceptics, the cynics actually made Uri Geller. The people who totally tried to knock me and say it's only an illusion – a slight of hand, chemicals and laser beams and transmitters in my teeth and all that were my unpaid publicists.” This is Uri Geller himself speaking. The self-styled psychic and entertainer is a strangely mesmerising figure. He is a showman of more than 30 years' pedigree, and has developed a highly polished act.
Famous for his publicity stunts – from televised spoon bending, to running 11 times around Highbury football ground, to break Newcastle United's spell of bad luck, to attempting to channel a telepathic birthday message to Michael Jackson as a contestant in I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Yet Geller claims that he is no illusionist, but the possessor of paranormal powers.
Although he accepts that his claim to be able to bend spoons with his mind has never been proven under laboratory conditions, he did undertake some tests at Stanford Research Institute in 1971, which he claims prove his telepathic abilities. The results of those experiments were baffling; despite conducting the tests in a cage shielded against all electromagnetic waves Geller was able to replicate seven out of eight images secretly drawn by researchers in an adjacent room.
The results were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. Yet some of Geller's most vocal critics, including men such as James Randi – the scientist who set up a million-dollar reward for the first supernatural phenomenon to be proved under laboratory conditions – accuse him of fakery, because he no longer participates in scientific research.
When asked whether it is paradoxical not to engage with attempts to prove his claims scientifically – given that his whole career is based on an assertion that his powers are genuine – Geller is unequivocal. “No, it's not a paradox; it's a mystery, and that's the way I like it.” He goes on, “I've done it [scientific research] for ten years, and I saw it went nowhere.
As soon as I'd finished one set of experiments in one laboratory or university, another set of scientists around the world wanted me to do the same. It was never enough and I saw that there is no end to it. And I realised that I'm a guinea pig and that's all I was doing … I thought to myself, ‘Now what do I really want in life? Do I want to stay a guinea pig?' Because basically the trivial things I do are so trivial that I don't see it developing into anything massively important in my lifetime.
Yet Geller went straight on to make some claims that are anything but trivial. “Yes, I do believe that certain things I have done off the record – like convincing the Russians to sign the Nuclear Treaty Agreement, and other things that I don't talk about – are more challenging than being locked up in a laboratory.” It is the close proximity between the supernatural and the material in Geller's life that sits rather uneasily.
On the one hand, he is happy to claim that “I don't take myself seriously all the time; I have to do quirky things, such as helping football teams, moving the ball away from McAllister's foot, getting into The Sun and The Star – because, you know, I like sensationalism, it's a part of what I do.” Yet on the other hand, this life of celebrity and entertainment is not enough. Although he asserts that “Science wants things to be repeated and repeated and repeated.
I wanted television, I wanted Jonnie Carson, I wanted Parkinson, I wanted to make a lot of money and quickly, and I wanted to entertain people,” he also admits: “Once I'd done that I found myself at a very low cycle and I found that wasn't what I wanted to do.” And instead, Geller now sounds more like a preacher than an entertainer.
Later that night, in the chamber of the Oxford Union, he made seeds sprout by tapping them, and bent spoons under the close eye of a video camera – but he seemed more interested in delivering a message than in rattling off such tricks. Thus he told the audience to “believe in yourselves,” and “tell yourselves you can change things for the positive.” When asked if he had any idea of a grand theory to reconcile supernatural phenomena, Geller replied: “My grand theory is infinity.
I think that there is no end, therefore everything is possible – everything will happen and is happening, so I'm not limited in my vision of believing in extraterrestrials, UFOs. I look at the ultimate dome of our sky on a bright night, and I say to myself now: ‘I'm looking at billions of stars; is it possible that we are the only ones alive in this vast universe?' Impossible. Statistically it can't be right. So I'm a great believer, but I'm also a religious man. I believe in God.
So you know if I believe in God, you know, I believe in everything.” This almost folksy way about Geller is something that strikes one as reminiscent of the innocence – real or cultivated – that Michael Jackson exudes. With Jackson facing fresh charges of child abuse, Geller is caught in somewhat of a dilemma: “I introduced Michael to Martin Bashir. He blames everyone probably for his downfall; its very sad the situation he's in.
Geller claims that Jackson responded negatively when asked, under hypnosis Geller himself induced, whether he had inappropriately touched children. Yet when pushed over the ambiguity of the term ‘inappropriate' – and Jackson's subsequent comment that his relationship with children was ‘beautiful' – Geller pauses for thought: “Yes that's true, I see.” Another pause.
“Now I'm beginning to read all the very negative stuff that is coming out, and I don't want to say that there is a doubt creeping into my mind, but certainly I'm more cautious now.” And perhaps that is Uri Geller: the long-time showman, entertainer and figure struggling with a crisis of identity. As he jokes, “I no longer want to be rich because I am rich.” And yet a distinct impression remains of an unresolved question in Geller's mind of what it is that he stands for.
“I discovered that money is meaningless.” Perhaps a part of his mystery, but the question of what is meaningful is left unclear.
17th Feb 2005